What comments like yours fail to consider is that Ericsson doesn't even have a horse in the handset race any more, which is a very important fact. They sold off their share of the Sony-Ericsson joint venture to Sony about a year ago (though the deal closed early this year) and have been doing just fine ever since, posting billions in profit with their bread-and-butter telecommunications equipment. They're out of the handset market and onto other things that are more focused on engineering and business-facing products than design and consumer-facing products.

As a result, they have nothing to gain by seeing Samsung fail, and they're doing just fine on their own, so this isn't a company who got beat turning patent troll. This is a case of a company outside the handset market who has legitimate patents based on actual engineering innovations having their patents used without proper licensing. There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.

ericsson is mostly profitable. they've hit some bumps recently because in a recession companies don't spend on hardware, they make do with what they have. services / support on the other hand are relatively recession proof as they are (relatively) long term contracts. hence their interest in expanding there.

Your links don't prove your point at all. In fact, if anything, they contradict it.

The first link you provided only tells us that they have a partnership with Microsoft to produce back-end solutions for telecommunications companies that need to manage billing for their customers. That has nothing to do with Android or Samsung and everything to do with them being in a business other than the handset business. And the second link you provided predates their leaving the handset market by several months. Since that time, they've divested themselves of the business they had that competed against Android, meaning that Android no longer poses any threat to them. In fact, greater Android adoption would be beneficial to them, since greater smartphone adoption would help drive demand for expanding telecommunications networks, which is exactly the business they're in.

In fact, just to highlight how silly this line of argumentation you have is, I'll point out that the NovaThor [wikipedia.org] platform Ericsson produces is only being adopted by Android phones so far, and you'll never guess which NovaThor-using company Ericsson cited in some of their most recent financial reports [hugin.info] (right on page 1) as an encouragement that gave them a better outlook for the coming months: Samsung.

The BusinessWeek number is for year-over-year change (as you'll see if you check Ericsson's Q3 2012 financial report [ericsson.com], so of course their net income dropped by 43%: they were still in the handset business at that time the previous year. Yet if you check their quarter-over-quarter change, you'll see that they're up 81% in terms of net income in just the last three months, indicating that they're recovering nicely from the restructuring involved with divesting thems

STOCKHOLM—Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, the world's largest maker of telecommunications equipment, posted a 64% drop in second-quarter net profit as a slowdown in demand weighed on results.

Ericsson said Wednesday that its challenges included weak sales in key markets such as Russia, China, India and Western Europe. The Stockholm-based company also cited margin pressure in North America and other markets amid waning demand for code-division multiple access, or CDMA, technology as operators shift to newer alternatives. In addition, the company's ST-Ericsson joint venture, which sells modems, continued to report losses.

I'd say their profit drops are at least in part due to Huawei's increasing market share. Their sale of the Sony-Ericsson division wouldn't do much. It lost a billion dollars in 2009 and has been steadily dropping in sales numbers since then.

As a result, they have nothing to gain by seeing Samsung fail, and they're doing just fine on their own, so this isn't a company who got beat turning patent troll. This is a case of a company outside the handset market who has legitimate patents based on actual engineering innovations having their patents used without proper licensing. There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.

They're the same industry. Telecommunications. Ericsson make cellphone networks. Samsung make cellphones that use those networks. If Samsung doesn't need Ericsson's patents, how do they make cellphones the work on cellphone networks? You know, those little things like GSM, WCDMA, GPRS, LTE and EGDE.

If patents in this area were stifling innovation, why is it just about every other cellphone manufacturer pays for them? Society has gained from these patents. There are but a few cellular network technologies world wide. This means manufactures, for a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory price can sell phones that work on networks in every country in the world. That's the part that promotes innovation. There is no discrimination for any company wishing to obtain a license and everyone pays the same amount. The playing field is level.

So you're saying that Ericsson has patents on required standards. That means they're supposed to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory in the licensing. Samsung isn't renewing the license (they were paying before) because Ericsson is supposedly significantly increasing the rates (according to Samsung).

Is Ericsson significantly increasing Samsung's license rates for a FRAND patent? Is this a level playing field?

Samsung did not base anything it did from reading any of the patents that Ericsson has. It did not copy anything. It came up with some ideas and implemented them because those ideas fall within the scope of what Samsung does. Samsung never needed 'help' from Ericsson

that really doesn't matter when it comes to patents. it's whoever has the patent. otherwise, the whole system breaks down because you could never prove that someone had inspiration from another patent / prove they didn't just think of the idea on their own in the shower one morning.

maybe you want the system to break down, and that's a different point that i'm not commenting on here.

The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.

Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded "significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio," adding that it planned to "take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims."

Samsung used to license these patents, then stopped paying. They knew a lawsuit was coming, and decided it was a fight worth taking. I have no clue whether the fees requested by Ericsson are unreasonable or not - but there's no need for conspiracy theories or ulterior motives on this one.

I believe Ericsson was a quite popular brand of phone in the dumbphone era, but their reputation has since died off.
Are companies that are unwilling to compete simply going to sue their competitors? Instead of devoting their resources to innovating, they're wasting their time and money on lawsuits while other companies are free to spend their time doing something interesting on their own.

Samsung sells a lot more than just phones, and I don't know if these companies are just trying to sue them into obliv

Definitely geared more towards business / infrastructure, than the S3's market, oh well.

Actually, the problem is the licensing of FRAND patents that Samsung had from Ericsson expired (Ericsson owns a few essential 3G onwards patents that are FRAND licensed). Samsung refused to relicense the patents.

It's not whether or not they're i the same market, it's that the S3 (and many others) use 3G and possibly LTE patents that belong to Ericsson, and that Samsung and Ericsson have failed to negotiate a new licensin

That is because of the standards being reliant on patent technology. FRAND be damned. That whole concept needs to go away in standards. It isn't a standard if the barrier to entry is that minefield.

Well, the 3GPP went the other way compared to the MPEG association. With MPEG, you can license EVERY h.264 patent you need by paying the fixed fee schedule offered by the MPEG Licensing Authority (aka MPEG-LA).

Of course, people dislike the patent pool idea as well because it offers no flexibility. Like how consum

And an interesting thing about this case - Ericsson is doing to Samsung what Samsung is doing to Apple, and indeed, Ericsson's arguments are practically identical. It's a very interesting situation, to say the least. (Likewise, it's probably similar to the rates Google/Motorola are asking from Apple and Microsoft and such, too.

So, the smart thing for Samsung to do is to take it to court, make sure they lose and then use the loss as precedent against Apple.

Samsung is kind of hard to compete with nowadays, they're like the Microsoft of the 90s, everybody wants to take a shot at the pie they're holding, but Samsung is responsible for a lot less BSOD (possibly better QC), so their PR isn't quite as bad.

Samsung is kind of hard to compete with nowadays, they're like the Microsoft of the 90s

Samsung is nothing like Microsoft...In fact Microsoft is still Microsoft only in the phone world its FUD; Bully Tactics; Burning Partners have got it treated like a clown that gives you cancer by both carriers and customers

The sad thing in this market anyway they are closet to...what Nokia was and could have been, several fledging operating systems including the successer to Meego [Tizen]; its own [Bada] and even Windows...its just the Market wants Android.

I believe that you and the submitter both have confused Ericsson the Telecommunication systems company with Sony-Ericcson their mobile phone subsidiary which they completely sold to Sony in 2012. Ericcson is the worlds largest supplier of telecommunications equipment and invented a huge chunk of the technology used by Samsung.

Last I checked Ericsson had close to 40% of the world-wide core network market, i.e. the stuff on the ground.They also sit on a lot of Radio essential patents.Samsung says they want a licence closer to the old one, but Ericsson has offered the same as they offer everyone else to Samsung now.

Ericsson also spun off their handset business as a joint venture with Sony quite a while ago and finally sold their half to Sony recently. So Ericsson and Samsung are no longer competitors in this area but they do compet

Ericsson is one of the companies that invented cellphones. How are they not relevant?They're not a cellphone manufacture anymore, so Samsung isn't a competitor. They hold patents for GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA and LTE. They are the largest mobile network provider. That's pretty relevant.

How dare anyone out there sue Samsung, after all she's been through! She loves her Galaxy! She went through a lawsuit! She had many business partnerships, her customers turned out to be (sob) litigious and now she's going through an appeal.All you companies care about is patents and making money off of her! SHE'S A CORPORATION! What you don't realize is Samsung is making all this money and all you do is file a bunch of crap against her.

... is sucked up by lawyers and judicial staff by way of my handset manufacturer.

On any given day you can replace "handset manufacturer" with "OS vendor", "service provider", "app developer", etc.This system stinks and it doesn't function in my interests as a consumer (or an engineer, for that matter).

In 1683, Hooke proposed a solution to the nonuniform rotary speed of the universal joint: a pair of Hooke's joints 90 out of phase at either end of an intermediate shaft, an arrangement that is now known as a type of constant-velocity joint.

The art of using a 400 year old invention, in ways it has been used for a very long time... interesting.

s/Samsung/Ericsson/g - this is a bait and switch tactic by Ericsson; license FRAND patents for a low cost at first, then try to increase the rates later. Samsung should be commended for standing up to them, even if no other manufacturers have.

Wouldn't a US ban on Samsung products constitute a ban on... pretty much everything electronic? I doubt there's a single electrical device in your home that doesn't contain at least some Samsung components.

Perhaps Samsung should bypass all these attempts at import bans by doing the final assembly locally. The physical assembly can still be done wherever, but the potentially patent-infringing software can be loaded on in the destination country, so what is shipped overseas does not infringe on the patents.

Or even sell them with something other than Android on them, but with something simple that allows the carriers to update them upon activation. Then they aren't infringing on any software patents until after they are sold!

Seriously, how else can a free market possibly be free if silly things like patents and copyrights get in the way. If people think you are worth the higher bucks, then higher bucks they will pay. This getting governments involved to enforce monopolies is totally gotten out of hand.

The problem with "free and open standards" is today it is simply a way to get your hat handed to you.

OK, manufacturer A spends tens of millions developing code and hardware for a new, higher efficency, faster protocol. Nearly all of this is simply software because, well, that is how things are done these days. There is nothing really interesting or new that is going to come along and be implemented in hardware.

Under a free and open standards policy, the documentation for this protocol would be freely avai

Ericsson no longer makes phones. They're a highly profitable company building cell phone networks with lots of patents in the wireless tech-sphere. Samsung and Ericsson are not, in other words, direct competitors and this is not a case of competing through the courts. Key part from TFA:

"The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.

"Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded 'significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio,' adding that it planned to 'take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims.'"

This is purely about the money. The two companies stopped negotiating, Samsung is betting that going to court (they must have known a lawsuit was coming) will end up better for them than paying Ericsson's fee.

Samsung is moving into the mobile network infrastructure market and hence is planing to become a competitor. This is probably the key for the dispute, Samsung will most likely use the IPR in other product segments than mobile phones only.

Ericsson has as well a 50% stake in ST-Ericsson, selling mobile platforms for manufacturers like Samsung. note, the S3 mini is based on an ST-Ericsson platform. Samsung has an own LTE platform as well. So Samsung is both a customer as a competitor to Ericsson in this area.

Nokia: while we haven't been in the rubberboot business for decades, we felt we needed to, just like Ericsson with phones, make our _former_ presence heard.Q: What have the damages to you been from Xtraufs move to China?Nokia: Why ask us? Ask that question to S

The US has hundreds of ports of entry and most of them aren't secured in any meaningful way.

For the last 15 years or so it has been illegal to import unlicensed DVD players. Philips gets $5 for each player license. When you buy a DVD player that costs less than about $50 it is clearly unlicensed - there is no room in the pricing structure for Philips to get $5 from the manufacturer. So, what is the US doing about this? Well, it is illegal to import these things so there is a complete import ban on these